Crime, Correction and Covenant
Texts: Hosea 4:1, 5:14-6:1, 6:3, 10:11-12
Introduction: Your Honor, the jury finds the defendant, the church of the 20th century, guilty on all counts and recommends corrective action be taken. Guilty, what crime could we, as a church be guilty of? What corrective action could be taken against a body of believers?
No, this is not a scene from any recent court case. No church that I know of is currently being sued, and I don’t know of any congregations that are being sent into solitary confinement by our judicial system.
Yes, there are believers all around our world that are being imprisoned for their faith in Christ. Yes, there are churches that are being shut down because they preach that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. In many parts of the world today it will cost you your home, your career, your family and, in many cases, your life if you are genuine believer in Jesus Christ. But that is not the scene I’m describing today. I wish our church was on trial for these things and being found guilty, but I am afraid that is not the case.
Unfortunately, however, the haunting words of "Guilty on all counts" ring true to our churches and I believe that the resulting corrective measures are already in place. Today I want to tell you about the crime of the church, God’s correction for the church, and the covenant God will make with the Church. Please turn in your bibles to Hosea 4:1. Hosea’s message to the Israelites was one of crime, correction and covenant.
Let’s look at the parallels between the crime, correction and covenant of Israel and the crime, correction and covenant of the church today.
Read Texts:
“Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land.”
Hosea 4:1
“Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you”
Hosea 10:12
I. The Crime
First, let’s discuss the crime.
“Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land.”
Hosea 4:1
God had a charge against the people of Israel. When Hosea says, "the Lord has a charge to bring against you," the word “charge” is literally translated as: a lawsuit or a criminal case. It’s sort of a Jehovah vs. the People of Israel. The people have committed a crime and it’s now time to go to court.
Now, in criminal court there is a plaintiff, a defendant, a judge and a jury. In this case, not only is God the plaintiff, but he is the prosecuting attorney and the judge and jury as well. Now tell me, who’s side would you want to be on in this case?
A. There is no truth.
The first charge that He has against the people is that there is no truth in the land. There was no truth in what the people were saying, there was no honesty in their actions, they no longer trusted one another, and they were not keeping their word. There was no trustworthiness. The Hebrew word for truth is “emeth,” which means truthfulness in all aspects of life.
This truthfulness was absent in the Israel that Hosea spoke to. Is that truthfulness in our churches today? Do we practice what we preach? Do we walk the talk? That’s the truthfulness that Hosea spoke of and I’m afraid we, like Israel, fall short. The church is full of "Sunday Christians." Sunday Christians are people who are great with lip service, but that’s where it ends. God wants people who live His truth day in and day out all the time, even when nobody’s watching. Too often we only talk the talk but seem unwilling to back our testimony up with our lives. Thus, God can make the charge that there is no truth!
B. There is no love.
The second charge against Israel and against the church was that there was no love in the land. The word used is “chesed” or ”hesed”. This meant compassionate love or as one commentary put it Loving-Kindness. This is compassion and genuine concern for our fellow man.
Israel came up short here. The rich got richer and the poor got taken advantage of. People didn’t care for the needs of one another. The question on everyone’s mind, if not their lips, was “What’s in it for me?” How do we stack up? How much compassion do we have for our fellow man? So much of the time any more, the Church is so busy with self-perpetuation that we forget to take compassion on the world around us.
Once there was a small group of people who had been rescued from drowning off of a rocky shoreline. They were so grateful for being rescued that they decided to build a rescue station on the coast with the mission of saving others who may get into trouble in the dangerous, rocky waters of the coast.
As time went by the members of this rescue station were able to rescue a great many people, and inevitably some of those they rescued were so grateful that they chose to stay and be a part of the rescue station crew. They too wanted to make sure that others were rescued from the dangerous waters along the coast.
As the station’s crew grew in number they were able to effect more and more rescues, but in order to do so they needed more equipment. They raised money, they gave their own money, they even found benevolent people to donate to the cause and they were able to build a larger and nicer rescue station.
As their work continued the members of the station crew also began to develop strong friendships. After all they had a lot in common. They had all been rescued. They were all in the business of rescuing others. Soon a strong social life began to develop among those at the station.
They would have nice activities to celebrate where they had come from. They would have parties to enjoy one another’s company. They would have nice get togethers just for the sake of getting together.
As time went by and the station was remodeled, added to and got nicer, and as the crowd became friendlier and friendlier with each other they began to loose sight of their mission.
They still rescued some people, when they had the time, but before the rescuees could enter the beautiful new station they had to clean up. The people being rescued couldn’t be allowed to get the station dirty you know.
Before long the rescue station evolved into a beautiful club. The rescue motif was strong, lots of life preservers and boats and nets. It was all very quaint, but rescues didn’t take place anymore. Only people of certain status and breeding were really accepted in the club. Oh, anyone could come in, but not all were warmly welcomed.
In the meantime hundreds and hundreds of people crashed on the rocky shoreline and drowned because the rescue mission was no longer rescuing people.
Does this sound like any churches you know? Are we a church that loves people and is still in the business of rescuing them or have we become an exclusive club that has the rescue motif going on? I’m afraid most American churches don’t do much rescuing anymore because they have lost their love for God and their love for their fellow man.
C. There is no knowledge.
The third charge God brings against Israel and against the Church, is a lack of knowledge of God. The word used here is “yada”. This means an intimate, heart knowledge. Adam yada Eve as his wife and as a result she conceived a child. This has a sexual connotation to it. The term “yada” describes the most intimate way a man can know his wife. This term is also used frequently by Old Testament writers to describe the most intimate way a man can know God.
The idea here is not one of just knowing God, but of experiencing God! To yada God is to know Him so perfectly that you know if you are in His will. The slightest stirring of His spirit is felt within you. God was not referring to head knowledge. He did not mean that His people needed head knowledge about God. Facts and figures are meaningless. God wants his people to have a true experiential, intimate, heart-felt knowledge of Him. Knowing about him isn’t enough
The Church is great at teaching people about God. But how many people in our churches today Yada the father? I’m afraid not many do any more. This lack of knowledge or yada is the cause for the first two charges. Without a true knowledge of God; without truly experiencing God, there is no truth and there is no love.
Our lack of knowledge of the Father is our crime, and for our crime He brings about our correction.
II. The Correction.
God will not leave us alone in our sin. He will always do something about it. He will begin by allowing the Holy Spirit to nudge us and convict us of our sin. But often we are hard hearted and don’t notice. So then God must use corrective measures to deal with our sin. How does God meat out his correction?
A. God breaks them/us.
In Hosea 5:14-6:1 we see evidence of God’s correction upon the Israelites. He pulled His spirit away from the people. He became "the enemy within." God says that he will “tear them to pieces” and then go away. He will allow the results of their sin to come upon them with full force and he will not be around to bail them out.
“For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a great lion to Judah. I will tear them to pieces and go away”
“Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt. And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me.”
“Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.”
Hosea 5:14-6:1
The people were turned over to their own sinfulness and that sinfulness brought destruction upon them. Paul describes this in Romans 1:24-25.
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised. Amen”
Does this not ring out with a bit of truth regarding our nation and our society today? Does this not, unfortunately, sound like many “Christian” churches in our nation today? I think it is very clear that many of our churches, in fact most churches, in America today do not have the Spirit of God upon them.
I believe that God is in the process of breaking his church. I believe we have been disobedient and have ignored his Holy Spirit’s attempts to draw us back to him so God is breaking the American church today.
We have become ineffective. The divorce rate among non-believers is about 51% nationally. Within the evangelical church in America the rate is about 51%. The number of teens engaged in pre-marital sex is the same outside and inside the church.
Churches are crumbling. In America more than 100 churches shut their doors for the last time each week. And fewer than 50 new ones open weekly to take their place.
Pulpits are empty. All across America, even in the Wesleyan church, there is a dangerous shortage of pastors.
We have people in our churches who give off the pretense of being Christian, but they are not. They are self-serving, deceitful, politically minded, not spiritually minded. They are people who look nice and talk nice and dress nice and smile but who stab one another in the back with words that God hates. And God is turning his church over to its own sins and churches across our land are being destroyed by their own sinfulness.
God is in the process of breaking the American church because we do not know him.
What about our church? Do we need to be broken by God? The sinful desires we gratify don’t have to be sexual or physical in nature. (Romans 1:24-25) The sinful desires we gratify can be bitterness, envy, undue anger, lying, backbiting, and destroying the unity in the church. When these things are going on, God will pull his spirit away form the church and allow us to self-destruct. How do we stand before the Lord today? Are we doing OK or are we self-destructing because God has turned us over to our own sinful thoughts and attitudes?
Because the people of Israel were disobedient to God, because there was no truth, love or knowledge, they were eaten up and destroyed by their own rottenness. Thus making them easy prey for their enemies. God broke them. He does the same with the church today.
B. God withdraws His Spirit.
Amos 8:11 says
"The days are coming declares the sovereign Lord, when I will send a famine through the land not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord."
The sins of the people, their lack of knowledge of the Lord, brought a spiritual drought upon the land. Look at our church today. There is terrible spiritual drought in our land. Our immorality as a nation is higher than it has ever been and our churches have less and less power. We wonder why we have less and less young men going into the ministry every year, why we have churches without pastors all over the nation, no one to fill the pulpits.
If we would look at ourselves we would see that because we do not know God and He does not know us! His spirit is lacking in our churches as a whole.
When God broke Israel, he then pulled his spirit away from them so that they would be alone in their misery. They would see that they were powerless to do anything about their sin. They would recognize that, without the Spirit of God upon them, they were as good as dead.
The same truth applies to our American churches today, including our church. The Spirit of God is absent. We are completely poverty stricken and broken because we have not known God and he has pulled his Spirit away from us. We are, I believe, in the midst of God’s correction upon his chosen, loved people, the church!
C. God’s correction is an act of love.
Take Heart. We must know that God does not correct us because He enjoys it. He does not want to punish us, just as he did not want to punish Israel. His correction comes from His love for us. And it is not a permanent, final state unless we choose to ignore his discipline.
Perhaps it can best be illustrated in the following story.
A lady had gone to visit the Holy Land, and during a waling tour she came upon a lamb that was lying along the side of the road, crying out in pain. Upon closer investigation she noticed that the lamb had an injured leg. She asked the shepherd what had happened, and was shocked by his response.
“I had to break the leg myself.” He replied sadly. “It was the only way to keep him from straying into unsafe places. You see, a sheep will follow me if I nurse it back to health.”
“Because of the loving relationship that will be established as I care for him, in the future he will come instantly when I call.”
Once the shepherd nurses the sheep back to health, it will stick close to him.
This is God’s purpose in correcting us. He corrects us because He loves us and doesn’t want us to stray into dangerous places. His correction is to help point us towards His covenants of love. In this case that is a covenant one of revival.
III. The Covenant.
Not only does God hate our crime. Not only does God want to correct us for our wrong doing. He loves us and gives us a beautiful covenant. His covenant of revival is clearly pointed out if we read Hosea 6:3 and 10:12.
“Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.”
Hosea 6:3
“Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you.”
Hosea 10:12
If we strive to know God, to yada Him, He promises to draw near to us. We must press forward always to try to know Him better and better, until He consumes our whole life.
A. If we acknowledge or know God…
How do we press on to know the Lord? Hosea uses an agricultural analogy to explain this to Israel. We too can learn from his analogy. The first thing Hosea tells the people to do is plow up the unplowed or fallow ground. We see this at the end of 10:11. The people must break up their fallow ground.
1. Break our heart hearts.
This ground is representative of the hearts of the people. We must break up our fallow ground. I found that the Old Testament word used for fallow was translated in two different ways. The first was “virgin soil or new soil,” the other was “soil that had been left untended for a while.”
I grew up in western Oklahoma in the wheat capitol of the world. Enid was the world’s largest
inland grain storage area so I had some acquaintance with farming. On one side of my home was at ten-acre wheat field. On the other side was a twenty five-acre wheat field. Our house and the church sat on a five-acre parcel of land right in the middle of these two wheat fields. We had a large empty field between the two wheat fields that we didn’t tend. We let it sit all year round and just mowed it down. Now that land, for ten years, didn’t have anything planted in it, and was never plowed, while the fields on either side were worked every year. The difference in the soil would amaze you. The wheat fields had soft, rich, healthy, workable soil that produced a harvest every June.
Our field was hard, cracked, and grew brown grass and tumbleweeds. If I were to have taken and scattered wheat across our field a few stalks would have produced, maybe. If I had scattered wheat across our neighbor’s field, most of the seed would have produced. The ground that is worked and turned over and sowed yearly will produce multiples of what was sowed. The fallow ground will not even break-even.
So it is with our hearts. We need to allow our hearts to be broken and turned regularly. We need to allow God to work our hearts and cultivate them and keep them fresh. When we don’t allow our hearts to be worked over regularly they become hard, unproductive and useless. If we want a revival, we need to break our hard hearts before the Lord.
2. Sow righteousness.
The next step was to sow righteousness or to live a righteous life. The action of breaking up the fallow ground is a man-to-himself action. It’s an internal action. The action of sowing righteousness is a man-to-man action. This involves me being righteous to my neighbor, my family, my fellow believer, my fellow church member. This is the truthfulness that we saw was missing earlier. To live a righteous life among one another is to live a life of truth. No good comes from plowing the field, if you don’t plant something in it.
Sow your heart with righteousness. Begin doing righteous things. This is not some sort of salvation by works ideology here. But it is a truth that God enforces. We must be people who sow righteousness, who do right things in response to our salvation, not to gain it. All this boils down to is the fact that God expects our obedience. Sowing righteousness is simply obeying God and doing what he has called us to do. When we do, God will do great things among us.
B. God pours out revival.
The next thing that happens is rain. Water for the seed. This is Gods revival. This is the whole point of Hosea’s lesson to his people. If we will break the ground and sow the seed, God will draw near and water that crop, refresh the earth and a bountiful harvest will result. God guarantees it. I can’t make it rain. But I can prepare the soil, and sow the seed and trust God to send his rain. God is a great God who always keeps his promises. If we will break our hard heart, or allow him to, and if we will so righteousness, he promises to pour out his rain of revival and love upon us.
Hosea 6:3 says "As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth." In 10:12 he says, "...for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you.” God wants to give us showers of blessing. He wants to revive our church today. But we must make the preparations for the rain. He won’t water the fields until they’re ready.
The result of our plowing and sowing and the watering is that we will reap unfailing love. Again the word “chased” or “hesed” is used. When we plow up the hard, fallow earth, when we sow righteousness and truth, the resulting harvest will be compassionate love. Not just among one another, but from God to us. The result of the man-to-himself, man-to-man actions, is a reaction that is God-to-man. We will reap the loving kindness of the father.
Conclusion: Is our church ready for God’s holy rain? Are you ready for God to pour out his rain upon you? Have you sowed the seeds of righteousness? Do you know, yada, God? If there is no revival in the church today, then we need to get busy tending the fields. Christ said the harvest is ready but the workers are few. How can we go harvest his fields when our own need so much tending? If you’re not receiving the rain from the father then plow up that unbroken ground. Sow the seeds of righteousness so that God can send his refreshing rains. He wants to, but you must first prepare the fields.
